Cellebrite Asks Cops To Hide Forensic Evidence Methods From Defense / Courts

ARTICLE QUOTE: "In a leaked training video for law enforcement customers that was obtained by TechCrunch, a senior Cellebrite employee tells customers that “ultimately, you’ve extracted the data, it’s the data that solves the crime, how you got in, let’s try to keep that as hush hush as possible.”

“We don’t really want any techniques to leak in court through disclosure practices, or you know, ultimately in testimony, when you are sitting in the stand, producing all this evidence and discussing how you got into the phone,” the employee, who we are not naming, says in the video.

For legal experts, this kind of request is troubling because authorities need to be transparent in order for a judge to authorize searches, or to authorize the use of certain data and evidence in court. Secrecy, the experts argue, hurts the rights of defendants, and ultimately the rights of the public.

“The results these super-secretive products spit out are used in court to try to prove whether someone is guilty of a crime,” Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at the Stanford University’s Internet Observatory, told TechCrunch. “The accused (whether through their lawyers or through an expert) must have the ability to fully understand how Cellebrite devices work, examine them and determine whether they functioned properly or contained flaws that might have affected the results.”

“And anyone testifying about those products under oath must not hide important information that could help exonerate a criminal defendant solely to protect the business interests of some company,” said Pfefferkorn.

Hanni Fakhoury, a criminal defense attorney who has studied surveillance technology for years, told TechCrunch that “the reason why that stuff needs to be disclosed, is the defense needs to be able to figure out ‘was there a legal problem in how this evidence was obtained? Do I have the ability to challenge that?’”

Similar to what we've seen with IMSI Catchers (aka "Stingrays", DRTBOX etc), vow of silence is also asked here...

Forget fair trials: Afterall, a true challenge in court could threaten more important things... things like profit, shareholders & access.

ARTICLE: https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/19/cellebrite-asks-cops-to-keep-its-phone-hacking-tech-hush-hush/